Consciencebound

Archive for the ‘psychology’ Category

Excellent Podcast episode of For Good Reason. Cognitive Dissonance is extremely interesting and scary at the same time. We are all so prone to only accepting and believing things that agree with what we already believe and listening to this really makes you consider your reasons for what you believe.

You can listen to this episode here

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This is a story from back in 2004 which I did not see at the time. Someone just forwarded an article to me about it the other day. It is a story about a disgruntled Colorado man who seemed to experience some pretty unfair treatment in his small Colorado town of Granby. His frustration culminated in building a steel and concrete reinforced bull dozer and destroying 15 buildings and many cars and finally by taking his own life. A video montage of this even is below or you can read a story about it which includes a lot more details here and a discovery channel story on it here. What I would like to comment on is this man’s feeling that he was guided by God or some higher power.
I am not trying to single this man and his crazy actions out as a representative example of believers in any way. Although I can sympathize with his frustrations, his actions are hardly condoned especially because his clear intention was to also take a number of people’s lives. I also know that many believers will think that this man is crazy and that God was most certainly not guiding him to do this. What I do think that it illustrates however is the way that humans can be clearly deceived by their own circumstances and by their own beliefs to think that God is on their side and leading or speaking to them and feel that they have clear evidence for this. The man who did this, Marvin Heemeyer, made audio tapes of his plans and his thinking before the event so we have some insight into what he was thinking.

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I have been going through old archives of one of my favorite podcasts, Reasonable Doubts and came aross Episode 21, Miracles with Guest Joe Nickell. The guest Joe Nickell is a paranormal investigator and the hosts discuss with Joe his approach to dealing with claims of the miraculous. They talk about visions, weeking statues, Speaking in tongues and other phenomenon which are said to be the miraculous work of the supernatural.

Miraculous claims abound today just like they did in the ancient world. We want to believe in the supernatural and in miraculous claims. It’s mysterious and exciting and it gives us hope that this natural world is not all that there is. For many, miracles are a proof for their faith, be it in God, Jesus, Astrology, UFO’s, Ghosts or whatever else. The interesting thing is that each group who believes that a miracle is a testament to the truth of their faith or beliefs looks with skepticism on other groups claims of the same thing. And if miracles are to be a proof of anything, it would seem that they are a proof of nothing since so many conflicting belief systems seem to be derived from them.

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